MMR Driverless

The MMR Driverless team was founded in 2017 and is committed to building an autonomous driving car to challenge university teams from all over Europe in Formula SAE, an international university competition of engineering design.

Into the competition, we are part of the Driverless category, which features the autonomous driving single-seater, born in Germany in 2017 and landed in Italy only the following year.

An autonomous driving vehicle must have the same capabilities as a human driver but enhanced: what does it do? Perceives and interprets the internal and external environment, processes received information and plans a driving strategy, implements the previously planned strategy using the engine, steering and brakes. Our story is written step by step, as we work to put these goals of autonomous driving into practice.

THE CAR

M23-DL

• CHASSIS: Carbon fiber monocoque with cut and fold technology.
• ENGINE: Four-in line cylinders, power 83hp@10500rpm.
• SENSORS: 32-beam gradient LIDAR, two single color cameras with software trigger, IMU, GPS RTK.
• EMBEDDED COMPUTER: NVIDIA JETSON AGX Orin.
• ACTUATIONS: Brushless 24V with CANOpen embedded control for brake and steering. 24V DC motor with in-house developed power electronics for clutch control. 24V linear actuator for gearbox control.
• ELECTRONICS: Board developed internally with STM microcontrollers.

OUR DIVISIONS

The team is organized around 7 divisions, each one of them working on tasks of a specific domain.

(Hover over the division to learn more)

(Click on the division to learn more)

BUSINESS & MARKETING

It focuses on the relationship with sponsors and suppliers, public relations and the Team’s image.
It is also responsible of the Business Plan, the focal point of the competitions that ultimately reflects the performance of the division.

VEHICLE DYNAMICS

This division works on the vehicle mechanics. Attention is paid to the chassis and on-board volumes management, aspects for all divisions, respecting the limits offered by the regulations. In addition, attention is paid to vehicle dynamics by working closely with the IT division on modelling the autonomous driving software.

PERCEPTION

The Perception division’s goal is to perceive, as accurate as possible, the surrounding environment using all the sensors mounted in the car like cameras, LiDAR, phonic wheels, IMU, GPS.
The focus here is to detect the cones around the track and calculate their distance w.r.t. vehicle.

POWERTRAIN

Bosch ECU calibration, test bench set up, design and optimization of accessory components such as the tank, management and maintenance of the engine and transmission system. They work on the optimization and brake test and EBS, redesign optimization and test of the clutch, gearbox and steering, system integration with driving in dual mode.

AUTONOMOUS DRIVING

The Autonomous Driving division takes care of the part of the autonomous driving software that deals with mapping the track, calculating the optimal trajectories for each event and following them with ours control algorithms.
Within this division, there is a sub-division dedicated to the implementation and maintenance of our simulator that we use to test the behaviour of our software in a controlled environment.

CONTROLS & PROGRAMMING

The programming division takes care of developing and controlling the actuations via software–actuations such as brake, clutch and steering wheel. From this year onwards, it will also manage the car’s telemetry.

ACTUATION

Division tasked with the design of electro-mechanic and pneumatic systems actuated during autonomous driving, such as steering, brake, emergency brake and clutch. These mechanisms are in charge of substituting the driver’s physical actions.